Treating Asthma and Eczema With Plant-­Based Diets

DESCRIPTION: Pilot studies on treating allergic eczema and severe asthma with dietary interventions have shown remarkable results.

If you missed the first three videos of this 4-part series here are the links:

More on eczema and diet can be found in my videos:

There are a number of other conditions plant-based diets have been found to be effective in treating:

Image Credit: Niels_Olson via Flickr.

[TCification]

I have severe asthma and changed to a plant based diet 10 days ago. I got a bad cold and as usual it went to my lungs and the asthma got bad. Normally i'd be in for 2 weeks recovery on steroids. 2 days and i'm considering heading out for a run tonight. Seem to have recovered without taking any drugs. I never started this diet for my asthma to be honest. i was lacking energy on my runs and my brother suggested giving this diet a try. I immediately noticed a lot more energy running, i'm talking about 3 days in but then i got sick with a bug going around...lots of people i know on antibiotics trying to recover. I was thinking the same...but this diet seems to help the body fight infection like never before...it seems determined to stay healthy and i'm not going to complain about that..

[JillianSnabilie]

When I was a child, I used to suffer from terrible eczema, asthma and hay fever. Honestly the worst symptoms ever. My entire back, arms, shoulders, hands, fingers -you name it on the upper body- were covered in eczema, itch and I felt disgusting.
2.5 years ago I was done with it and I started looking up things that might help, I stumbled unto veganism.

To be fair: I am not a person that notices drastic changes in the body, due to not being consious enough, BUT I can say that after being vegan for 2.5 years. One week of not being able to eat fully vegan due to not being home, has been bringing back the itches and heavy breathing. I'm now home again, fully vegan and I do think I can say that veganism has helped me much more than the steroids have ever could.

[Ben-frgi]

I've had asthma since I was very young, and problems with dust allergies. These just kept getting worse until I was 30, the symptoms were going up and I kept having to increase medicine and add new ones. It was getting difficult. Then I started eating vegan food, absolutely no expectations it would do anything to this, but after a while I realised my dust allergy had reduced a lot. My asthma greatly improved too, although that took longer. Currently approaching two years of being vegan and I'm still taking medicine for allergies and asthma, but pretty low doses, less types, and haven't had an asthma attack for a long time. I don't know if I'm going to get fully off the medicine, might have levelled out at this point and got what I'm going to get out of this, but it's been a huge improvement in this time and I'm happy.

Day to day I'm feeling healthy, I'm not worried about it getting worse and I'm taking low doses of medicine that are less likely to cause side effects. I suspect my asthma is just something I have and won't ever entirely remove, but I think I also have a milk allergy that was making it a lot worse - the milk allergy symptoms on the NHS website certainly match what was happening to me, and times I've accidentally eaten things with milk in I've been sneezing and getting short of breath.

[saesae]

As an adult who relapsed with eczema/Atopic Dermatitis (which I had as a child but without it for decades, relapsed) and got better quickly recently-basically eczema is an energy overflow issue with vitamin b complex deficiency. It’s not allergy but AD people are not good at generating protein on skin. In my experience it got pretty much cured with lower fat (but take 20-30 mg omega 3, 6, vitamin A, zinc, iodine, vitamin b6, 1, 12, 2, zero need for veganism), moderate protein, carbs are fine but if you eat too much sugar too fast your metabolism speeds up too much and your cell runs out of vitamin b and fat, protein, causing those itchy dry patches. Kids get AD often because their bodies are small and eating too much cause metabolic issue. Adults now get eczema because we eat a lot these days. They know all this vitamin b deficiency with high metabolism caused AD in mouse studies. This explains why both healthy low fat vegan (= lower energy intake as food tastes pretty crappy with fiber) and carnivore (=slower metabolism due to low carb) work for eczema as well as fasting. Smaller meals timed also help because our cells can’t take too much metabolizing in a short time.

[MrMasterDebate]

My family is so brainwashed by big meat and dairy they refuse to believe my rash vanished from diet. They insist I just stopped itching

[bookmouse]

it doesn't help too much if you have carpeting, cats, and are allergic to wheat too.

[nancykeith]

If dermatitis is left untreated, it can easily lead to critical health issue.

[travissherwood]

I was a vegan for a while, and all illnesses regarding inflammation, and allergens were considerably worse. 
The more glucose I consumed in regards of fruit, rice, grains, legumes, even in some veggies.. I became worse.
I went on a high fat low carb diet (essentially low glucose) and reversed all this.